bluetooth led always on (Sony Vaio SZ650N)

[Michael Doube]

Binary package hint: acpi-support

The bluetooth LED on my Sony Vaio SZ650N always glows, even when I remove the bluetooth modules from the kernel, thus it is not an accurate indicator of bluetooth status. It does turn off when I flick the kill switch, but I also lose WiFi which is controlled by the same switch.

I can extinguish the bluetooth LED by killing power to the bluetooth device:

$ su
$ echo "0" > /sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/bluetoothpower

[Michael Doube (michael-doube)]

This is still a problem in Hardy alpha 5

[Leann Ogasawara (leannogasawara)]

Hi Michael,

You may want to retest with the 2.6.24-10 kernel just to verify this still exists. Also, it looks like your dmesg cache filled up and the original boot messages were overwritten. Care to recapture the dmesg output after a fresh reboot and unloading of the bluetooth modules? Thanks.

[Michael Doube (michael-doube)]

Here's dmesg prior to unloading modules...

[Michael Doube (michael-doube)]

And after unloading bluetooth modules... (LED is still on).

[Michael Doube (michael-doube)]

The bluetooth LED does go off if I switch the RF Kill switch to Off:

This is dmesg

Kill switch -> OFF:
[ 692.680911] usb 5-1: USB disconnect, address 2
(LED turns off)

Kill switch -> ON:
[ 712.330562] usb 5-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 3
[ 712.546427] usb 5-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[ 712.615196] Bluetooth: Core ver 2.11
[ 712.616024] NET: Registered protocol family 31
[ 712.616027] Bluetooth: HCI device and connection manager initialized
[ 712.616030] Bluetooth: HCI socket layer initialized
[ 712.618399] Bluetooth: HCI USB driver ver 2.9
[ 712.625491] usbcore: registered new interface driver hci_usb
(LED turns on)

Turn off bluetooth with Powertop
[ 757.597231] usbcore: deregistering interface driver hci_usb
(LED stays on)

Kill switch -> OFF
[ 779.799868] usb 5-1: USB disconnect, address 3
(LED turns off)

[Michael Doube (michael-doube)]

I can manually turn the bluetooth LED off by enabling the root account then:

$ su
$ echo "0" > /sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/blutoothpower

echoing a value > 1 turns the LED back on.

[Michael Doube (michael-doube)]

Woops, that should be, "echoing a value > 0 turns the LED back on."

Michael Doube wrote:
> I can manually turn the bluetooth LED off by enabling the root account
> then:
>
> $ su
> $ echo "0" > /sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/blutoothpower
>
> echoing a value > 1 turns the LED back on.
>

[Jim Qode (jimqode)]

Same here with hardy alpha 6 annd dell xps m1330. You can only kill the light with the hard switch, but it kills wifi too. Removing bluetooth related modules from the kernel does not work.

[Michael Doube (michael-doube)]

Still present in Hardy Beta

[Petr Menšík (pihhan)]

I have Sony Vaio VGN-FZ210C and i have exactly same behaviour. hcitool hci0 down does not turn it off, removal of usb-hci does not also. My difference is, i dont have /sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/bluetoothpower or /sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop present. My bios does not have acpi method for that. It is possible to do that on windows using some sony utility, where i can enable or disable bluetooth. That utility does hide bluetooth adapter from windows device manager if bluetooth is disabled.

[Rafael Sachetto (rsachetto)]

I have the same problem here using a Asus F3sc.

[fred lonauer (sumperer)]

I use a SONY VGN-C2S: My Bluetooth-LED ist always on, but I also have a WLAN-LED, which is not! WLAN works fine, but the LED will not work. This behavior is new in Kernel 2.6.24-16 and 2.6.24-17 (=hardy) Both LEDs work with kernel 2.6.22-14.

[Michael Doube (michael-doube)]

Fred, thanks for confirming the bluetooth LED bug on your machine.

The WiFi LED bug is well known, fixed and reported in bug #176090 - you just have to install the kernel module backports.

[Daniel Hahler (blueyed)]

fred, have you tested it with just the old kernel, but the same acpi-support version?
(I'm asking, because it sounds like it's not a bug related to acpi-support, but the kernel only.)

Jim, you've added the acpi-support task.. why?

[Sayantan Das (sayantan13)]

hi,
can anyone tell me where to find the bluetooth power. I want to turn the BT light it off. I've been able to turn BT off with a small
script, but the light stays on. I'm using Ubuntu 8.04, Dell Inspiron 6400.

Thanks in advance.

[Leann Ogasawara (leannogasawara)]

The Ubuntu Kernel Team is planning to move to the 2.6.27 kernel for the upcoming Intrepid Ibex 8.10 release. As a result, the kernel team would appreciate it if you could please test this newer 2.6.27 Ubuntu kernel. There are one of two ways you should be able to test:

1) If you are comfortable installing packages on your own, the linux-image-2.6.27-* package is currently available for you to install and test.

--or--

2) The upcoming Alpha5 for Intrepid Ibex 8.10 will contain this newer 2.6.27 Ubuntu kernel. Alpha5 is set to be released Thursday Sept 4. Please watch http://www.ubuntu.com/testing for Alpha5 to be announced. You should then be able to test via a LiveCD.

Please let us know immediately if this newer 2.6.27 kernel resolves the bug reported here or if the issue remains. More importantly, please open a new bug report for each new bug/regression introduced by the 2.6.27 kernel and tag the bug report with 'linux-2.6.27'. Also, please specifically note if the issue does or does not appear in the 2.6.26 kernel. Thanks again, we really appreicate your help and feedback.

[Rafael Sachetto (rsachetto)]

I have a Asus laptop and I'm using Intrepid with 2.6.27-3-generic kernel. Now when I turn off the switch, the bluetooth led is turned off too. But the hotkeys to turn off wireless and bluethooth are not working.

[Francisco T. (leviatan1)]

In my asus laptop, bluetooth led always is on, but my laptop doesn't have bluetooth hardware.
/sys/devices/platform/asus-laptop/bluetooth is always "1"

Linux portatil 2.6.27-7-generic #1 SMP Fri Oct 17 22:24:21 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Per a decision made by the Ubuntu Kernel Team, bugs will longer be assigned to the ubuntu-kernel-team in Launchpad as part of the bug triage process. The ubuntu-kernel-team is being unassigned from this bug report. Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelTeamBugPolicies for more information. Thanks.

[Michael Doube (michael-doube)]

This behaviour has not changed in Karmic alpha 4.

[pixolex (pixolex)]

I have exactly the same problem in my ASUS W5F and 9.10 Karmic Koala freshly installed. The WIFI/BLUETOOTH hardswitch turns off both the BT and WIFI leds. When I try to soft disable them with the gnome tray icons just the WIFI led is turned off, the BT led always stays on.

[chrisling (chrisling)]

Same issue found on VAIO VGN-C2Z, BT LED always on.

$ echo "0" > /sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/bluetoothpower won't work as bluetoothpower does not exist. Pls see log:

chris@chris-laptop:~$ grep . /sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/*
/sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/brightness_default:7
/sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/modalias:platform:sony-laptop
/sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/uevent:DRIVER=sony-laptop
/sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/uevent:MODALIAS=platform:sony-laptop

Question: Would backport 26.31.14.27 fixes it?

[Keng-Yu Lin (lexical)]

it seems that the BT LED is controlled by sony-laptop driver and it detects the key event of the rfkill switch to turn on/off the LED. Currently there is no way to inform sony-laptop driver to turn off the LED while rmmod'ing BT driver, so the LED is still on.

This will happen on all laptops with similar *-laptop modules for handling the rfkill key events.

[chrisling (chrisling)]

According to http://www.linux.it/~malattia/wiki/index.php/Sony-laptop, there is an interface implemented already to inform the sony-laptop to turn off LEDs

and it has nothing to do with rfkill!!!

Besides that, where is the evidence to support your claim, i.e. "This will happen on all other laptops with the *-laptop modules"?

[Keng-Yu Lin (lexical)]

Could you `cat /sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/bluetoothpower` after you rmmod'ed the BT module?

[chrisling (chrisling)]

I cannot afford the risks to remove the BT module, besides bluetoothpower is not found under ../sony-laptop by default.

Why would I want to do that anyway?

[Michael Doube (michael-doube)]

You may be interested to try David Jurenka's Vaio power scripts to turn off bluetooth and other usually unused devices:

http://jurenka.cz/vaio-on-linux/

[chrisling (chrisling)]

Dave's scripts can disable bt by shutting down bluetoothd and deregister its interface indeed but it won't turn off the LED, also it's looking for the same bluetoothpower which in my case wasn't found under ../sony-laptop.

Thanks for your suggestion anyway, Michael.

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Michael Doube, this bug was reported a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering if this is still an issue? If so, could you please test for this with the latest development release of Ubuntu? ISO images are available from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/ .

If it remains an issue, could you please run the following command in the development release from a Terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal), as it will automatically gather and attach updated debug information to this report:

apport-collect -p linux <replace-with-bug-number>

Also, could you please test the latest upstream kernel available following https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelMainlineBuilds ? It will allow additional upstream developers to examine the issue. Please do not test the daily folder, but the one all the way at the bottom. Once you've tested the upstream kernel, please comment on which kernel version specifically you tested. If this bug is fixed in the mainline kernel, please add the following tags:
kernel-fixed-upstream
kernel-fixed-upstream-VERSION-NUMBER

where VERSION-NUMBER is the version number of the kernel you tested. For example:
kernel-fixed-upstream-v3.11

This can be done by clicking on the yellow circle with a black pencil icon next to the word Tags located at the bottom of the bug description. As well, please remove the tag:
needs-upstream-testing

If the mainline kernel does not fix this bug, please add the following tags:
kernel-bug-exists-upstream
kernel-bug-exists-upstream-VERSION-NUMBER

As well, please remove the tag:
needs-upstream-testing

Once testing of the upstream kernel is complete, please mark this bug's Status as Confirmed. Please let us know your results. Thank you for your understanding.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for linux (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]